Sunday Salon: Welcome Spring, Happy Easter!

Welcome to the Sunday Salon!

The first bright yellow in the garden. Spring is finally here !

Happy Easter!

Book Beginning: Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian

Friday 56 Rules: *Grab a book, any book. *Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader  *Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you. *Post it. *Add your (url) post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also Book Beginnings by Rose City Reader.

Dear Lucy

Title: Dear Lucy: A Novel by Julie Sarkissian
Publication date: April 22, 2014; Simon and Schuster

Book beginning:

Everyone is asleep but me.
I look quick in every room to see that nobody is missing and nobody is. That is good because if someone is missing I have to leave to go find them and then who would get the eggs? Because they have never known a girl who was as gentle with the eggs. 

Page 56:

But the moon is winking and winking and I try to keep my legs heavy but they float up like fog above the river and carry me above the floor and out down the stairs and into the coop.

Book description:
Deserted by her vivacious, social-climbing mother, Lucy has been taken in by an older couple, known only as Mister and Missus, to work on their farm. There, she befriends a pregnant teenager named Samantha who tells conflicting stories about her past, but who finds an unlikely rapport with Lucy.
When Samantha gives birth and the baby disappears, Lucy arms herself with Samantha's diary--and a talking chicken named Jennifer--and embarks on a journey to reunite mother and child. A story of love, family, and loyalty. (goodreads)

What do you think? Is this a book you'd read based on the excerpts and description? Lucy sounds like an unlikely and unusual main character.

Book Review: When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon

Title: When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon 
Published April 1, 2014; Harper
Genre: fiction, historical fiction
Objective rating: 4.5/5

About the book: Daphne grew up in the 1990s on the small Greek island of Erikousa and, a widow with a young son, now lives and works as a successful restaurant owner in New York. She returns to Corfu to prepare for her wedding to Stephen Heatherton, who will join her in about a week from New York.

Daphne's reunion with her cousin Popi in Corfu and her grandmother Yia-yia in Erikousa reawakens her memories and her traditional home values. She learns more about her grandmother's life and sacrifices during the war, when Greece was occupied in the 1940s, about secrets her Yia-yia had never shared with her. Daphne soon comes to reevaluate her beliefs and questions her life in ultra modern New York, especially after meeting the mysterious but alluring Yanni.

My comments: What seemed at first to be a straightforward story of a woman who returns to her roots soon becomes one much more involved. The life of the Greeks on the islands during wartime occupation and the story of Yianni, a survivor, and his connection to Daphne's grandmother, add an important and fascinating historical component to the book.

A poetic touch is the grandmother's message to young Daphne, which she states again when Daphne has returned to the island. Listen to the island's cypress trees, whose whispers in the wind will impart truth and wisdom.

I thought this was a wonderful read. I wasn't too keen on the ambiguous ending of the novel, however, though it stressed that many aspects of life, including the romantic, are not at all predictable.

Yvette Manessis Corporon is an Emmy Award-winning writer, producer, and author. She is currently a senior producer with the syndicated entertainment news show Extra. Yvette has received a Silurian Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the New York City Comptroller and City Council’s Award for Greek Heritage and Culture. She is married to award-winning photojournalist David Corporon. They have two children and live in New York.

Find out more about Yvette at her website, follow her on Twitter, and connect with her on Facebook.
Purchase links: Amazon | IndieBound | Barnes & Noble
Click here for the tour schedule.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for a review ARC of this book.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life by Cassandra King

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Breaking the Spine,  that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life

The Same Sweet Girls' Guide to Life: Advice from a Southern Belle by Cassandra King is a short and sweet lecture of advice to young women, to be published May 1, 2014 by Maiden Lane Press; 97 pages

Book description: This lecture was delivered by the author to a graduating class in May 2013 at her alma mater, Montevallo College in Alabama. 

The Same Sweet Girl’s Guide to Life offers inspiration and solid advice to new graduates that can sustain them through life’s ups and downs.  This small book offers  hard-earned wisdom for young and old.

Her first pearl of wisdom: sincerity is an important virtue, and once you learn to fake it, you are well on your way to success! Dare to laugh at yourself.  Find kindred spirits and keep them close to you; expand your circle of friends. Know the true value of time. She also advises that we try to find words to express love and gratitude but to keep in mind that it is our actions that reveal our feelings more than our words.

And as an addition to this lecture, King adds a new afterword on the value of becoming a lifelong reader. (goodreads)

Sounds like a good book for new college graduates! The title of this lecture refers to her novel The Same Sweet Girls, a book about lifelong friends, published in 2012.

What new book are you waiting on?

Book Review: Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

Title: Black Chalk: A Novel by Christopher J. Yates
Publisher: Random House UK; First Edition edition (April 1, 2014)

Something someone said all those years ago has stuck in my mind. Although I can't actually remember who said it....
Of course winning is everything. Why else do you think we call ourselves the human race? (p. 14)

My comments: 
Oxbridge students will definitely love this book, as will college or university students who are competitive and love mind games. For this is what it is - a novel about Oxford students joining a club called Gaming, and creating a psychological game that tested wits and mental endurance. This was not meant to be a physical challenge, but it turned out to involve the physical further in the game.

I was a little out of my league with this book - I have long left the university as either a student or teacher, and my mind games are limited to word games or backgammon. But those readers still involved in gaming, virtual or otherwise, will find the book's setting and characters intriguing and the plot unusual and compelling. Do try it, if you like games and uncertain outcomes, even though you may not be a player.

About the book: "One game. Six students. Five survivors.
It was only ever meant to be a game.
A game of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares. A game to be played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal, more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results.
Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round." (publisher)

Christopher J. Yates studied law at Wadham College, Oxford from 1990-93 and initially pursued a career in law before he began working in puzzles, representing the UK at the World Puzzle Championships. Since then he has worked as a freelance journalist, sub-editor and puzzles editor/compiler. In 2007 he moved to New York City with his wife, and currently lives in the East Village.
Please visit his website, christopherjyates.com.

Thanks to TLC Book Tour and the publisher for a review copy of this book. Visit TLC for the tour schedule and other reviews.


INTERNATIONAL GIVEAWAY: 

To enter, comment here or email me at harvee44@yahoo.com with the heading: BLACK CHALK GIVEAWAY. The contest is open worldwide as the publisher in the UK is willing to send the books anywhere. The contest ends April 19. Winner will be notified by email on April 20 to send a mailing address, and will have two days to respond before another winner is chosen. Good luck!

UPDATE: Congrats to Brian Joseph, the winner of this giveaway!

Sunday Salon: Reading and Gardening Plans

Welcome to the Sunday Salon! Also visit The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Book Reviewer; It's Monday: What Are You Reading? at Book Journey. Also visit Mailbox Monday, hosted by Vicki, Leslie, and Serena.

We are considering putting in a raised garden bed for veggies, a bed that will have to be meshed in with wire to keep out the bunnies. I have already bought seeds for peppers, string beans, squash, and basil genovese, to plant as late as early May. The temps will dip below freezing this coming week! A customer at the store advised me to forego wood, which deteriorates over time, and to use concrete blocks to form the beds.

For the April National Poetry Month Blog Tour hosted by Savvy Verse and Wit, I blogged on Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," It had been a while since I had read that poem but it came back to me easily.

I have finished three books for book tours/review:
Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates, for tomorrow
When the Cypress Whispers by Yvette Manessis Corporon, for Wednesday
Murder on Bamboo Lane by Naomi Hirahari, for later this month
and am in the middle of reading
A Tiger's Tale by Laura Morrigan for a May 11 tour

Other books I've started include
The Year She Left Us by Katherine Ma
Death Money by Henry Chang

 A few interesting novel, mixed genres, came in this past week:

Jack of Spies

Dear Lucy

All Day and Night

North of Normal

Eyes on You

Mrs. Hemingway

Click on the title captions for details re the books.

I have my reading cut out for me. How about you?

National Poetry Month: "Spring and Fall: to a Young Child" by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The 2014 National Poetry Month Blog Tour is hosted by Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit to celebrate poets and poetry in April. Let me share one of my favorite poems.

Spring and Fall
  by Gerard Manley Hopkins

              to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16074#sthash.GsA1Cneo.dpuf

My thoughts: I fell in love with this short poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins when our English teacher introduced it to us in our first year in college. A published poet herself, she read it with such clarity and conviction and feeling that I felt I was able to understand Margaret and feel just as she did!

Margaret the young child has seen the renewal of spring and is just now realizing what autumn means, when the leaves turn golden and fall - the end of spring and summer, a loss that to us symbolize the end of life or of innocence. Hopkins turns this into a moral or insight into human nature and predicts that Margaret, in her youth just now experiencing the sorrow of loss, will experience ever greater loss in the future, so that autumn and the changing of seasons will gradually cease to distress her.

What are your reactions to the poem and what do you take from it?
How do you respond to the rhythm and the rhyme of the lines?
Try reading it out loud for the full effect.

Born at Stratford, Essex, England, on July 28, 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins is regarded as one the Victorian era's greatest poets. 

He was raised in a prosperous and artistic family. He attended Balliol College, Oxford, in 1863, where he studied Classics. In 1864, Hopkins first read John Henry Newman's Apologia pro via sua, which discussed the author's reasons for converting to Catholicism. Two years later, Newman himself received Hopkins into the Roman Catholic Church. Hopkins soon decided to become a priest himself, and in 1867 he entered a Jesuit novitiate near London. At that time, he vowed to "write no more...unless it were by the wish of my superiors." Hopkins burnt all of the poetry he had written to date and would not write poems again until 1875.

He spent nine years in training at various Jesuit houses throughout England. He was ordained in 1877 and for the next seven years carried his duties teaching and preaching in London, Oxford, Liverpool, Glasgow, and Stonyhurst. In 1875, Hopkins began to write again after a German ship, the Deutschland, was wrecked during a storm at the mouth of the Thames River. Many of the passengers, including five Franciscan nuns, died. Although conventional in theme, Hopkins poem "The Wreck of the Deutschland" introduced what Hopkins called "sprung rhythm." By not limiting the number of "slack" or unaccented syllables, Hopkins allowed for more flexibility in his lines and created new acoustic possibilities. In 1884, he became a professor of Greek at the Royal University College in Dublin. He died five years later from typhoid fever.

 Although his poems were never published during his lifetime, his friend poet Robert Bridges edited a volume of Hopkins' Poems that first appeared in 1918. In addition to developing new rhythmic effects, Hopkins was also very interested in ways of rejuvenating poetic language. He regularly placed familiar words into new and surprising contexts. He also often employed compound and unusual word combinations. As he wrote to in a letter to Bridges, "No doubt, my poetry errs on the side of oddness…" Twentieth century poets such as W.H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Charles Wright have enthusiastically turned to his work for its inventiveness and rich aural patterning. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/284#sthash.JeZaYNwR.dpuf